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Topic: 1 Dough, 2 Ferments? (Read 1048 times)

I will be home for a few days from school and hope to make pizza twice. It would be nice if I could make 1 batch of dough and split it up into 2 subsets, where 1 portion of the dough could undergo a 1 day room temperature fermentation and the other subset could undergo a 3 day cold fermentation. I will be using a very standard Lehmann formulation, with KABF, 60% hydration, 1% oil, 1% sugar, 2.5% salt, and some amount of ADY. The temperature while I will be home will be close to 70F during the day, but I can put the dough in certain locations in my house so that the temperature won't get above 65F during the day and 60F at night. I have been using 0.5% ADY for 3 day cold ferments, which I think may be slightly high (I usually bulk for 1 day, ball, then cold ferment for 2 more days). Is there a ADY percentage that you think would work for both the 1 day room temperature ferment (@ 60-70F) and the 3 day cold ferment (@36F), assuming that the final dough temperature will be the same for both doughs (as they would be mixed together)? If so, what target finished dough temperature should I shoot for and at what temperature should the room temperature ferment occur at?

Dan;A good compromise ADY level for both cold and room temperature fermentation would be 0.25% ADY. As for finished dough temperature I would suggest shooting for something in the 70 to 75F range. My own personal preference is to place the room temperature ferment dough in the cooler of the two locations mentioned.Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

If one of the dough balls is to ferment for 24 hours at a room temperature of 60-70 degrees F, you might want to take a look at the chart at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,26831.msg271398.html#msg271398 to come up with an amount of ADY to use for test purposes. I looked at what I did for a long room temperature fermentation (but using IDY), at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7225.msg62332.html#msg62332, and the ADY quantity in the abovementioned chart seems to be credible once adjustment (an increase) to the room temperature is taken into account and IDY is converted to ADY. In my case, what I was looking for was an 80-120% increase in the volume of the dough. In your case, if you will be able to monitor your dough over 24 hours, you might be able to use more yeast but punch the dough down several times during that period.

Peter, according to Craig's chart, I should use 0.05% ADY for the room temperature ferment at ~63F and about 0.15% ADY for a 3 day ferment at 36F. I read your thread on the long room temperature fermentation and was surprised that you used 0.01% IDY and still had gluten-breakdown, granted at 80F.

I may just make 2 batches of dough, as I'm interested in how Craig's table works for me.

After my last post, I took my example of the dough fermented at 80 degrees F for 20 hours and went to Reply 16 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5028.msg42572.html#msg42572 and, using the above example as the reference standard and the methodology described in Reply 16, I recalculated the amount of IDY needed to cause the dough to about double at a room temperature of 65 degrees F (the average of 60 degrees F and 70 degrees F) and a fermentation period of 24 hours. I then converted the adjusted amount of IDY to ADY and got 0.0254% ADY. If you look at Craig's table, you will see that my calculation was in the ballpark. I don't know if Craig uses a doubling in his table but my reference standard was based on a doubling of the dough. But the main point I want to make is that room temperature is a powerful force and, as a result, you have to counteract that with small amounts of yeast. It's possible that Tom thought that you would be making a room temperature dough in a few hours, not 24 hours.

If your refrigerator is operating at a true and consistent 36 degrees F, 0.15% ADY might not be off the wall. The other day, I made a dough with 0.12% IDY (equivalent to 0.16% ADY) and after a day of cold fermentation, the dough had risen by 67.5% (using the poppy seed spacing). After two days of cold fermentation, the dough had risen by 226% (a bit more than 1 1/4 times). Since my experiment ended at that point, I did not go to a third day. Had I chosen to do so, I would have lowered the IDY from 0.12% to maybe something around 0.10% IDY. That would have been equivalent to about 0.133% ADY. However, I should add that my refrigerator has a hard time staying below 40%, especially here in Texas where our temperatures always run high in the summer and refrigerators have to work hard to cool things down.

I think that I will use two doughs. Does this look like an acceptable 24 hour 65F formulation? Should I back down on hydration given your findings on the "Long Room Temperature Fermentation" thread? I believe that I am still a few points below the rated absorption with the KABF at 60%.

Also, I do not have a precision scale for weighing yeast. The amount of yeast that I would be using is 1/25 tsp. I think that my smallest measuring spoon is 1/4 tsp. Do you have any tips of measuring out 1/25 tsp of yeast?

I would leave the hydration alone since you will be fermenting at a lot lower temperature than I used for my experiment.

As for how to measure out the yeast, if you do not have a scale that can weigh small quantities and the smallest measuring spoon you have is 1/4 teaspoon, you may have to use a brute force approach. What you essentially want to do is to measure out a level 1/4 teaspoon of ADY, divide it in fourths, and take 2/3 of one of the fourths. The way I would do it is to spread out the 1/4 teaspoon of ADY on a flat work surface to form a square or rectangle, press something over the yeast so that it is of uniform thickness, and square the sides with a straight edge. I would then divide the square or rectangle into fourths, and brush away all but one of the fourths. I would then take two thirds of that remaining fourth. That 2/3 part should get you close to 1/25 teaspoon.

One thing to keep in mind is that ADY has to be rehydrated in a portion of the formula water at around 105 degrees F for about 10 minutes. The rehydrated ADY can then be added to the remaining formula water.